Witness to the German Revolution by Victor Serge Page B
Authors: Victor Serge
Tags: History, Germany, 20th Century, Europe, Political Science, Political Ideologies, Modern, Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, Former Soviet Republics
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etc., are threatening to cause the closure of all the private hospitals and sanatoriums in the capital. Too bad for people who donât have a bath in their home and who canât go to the Black Forest to be cared for when they are ill!
The bourgeoisie wonât let a halfpenny go
âThe propertied classes must agree to make sacrifices.â That is how the Stresemann-Hilferding government puts it, and we know that it is demanding the payment of various new taxes in foreign currency. An unavoidable necessity. According to the official budget report of August 20, state expenditure has increased 3,500,000 timesâtaking the pre-war level as oneâand income 77,250 times. With a deficit of that size, the functioning of the machine will soon come to a halt. And then, if they want to make starving people work harder, they really must tell them that the rich are chipping in somethingâ¦
Only thereâs a problem: the rich are idiots, the rich are stubborn, the rich donât want to pay. The Nation, the Republic, the Vaterland 104 can rot, Iâm keeping my money! The association of Saxon industrialists has written to citizen Hilferding to state that the new taxes are too high; they canât pay. The landowning deputies in the Reichstag, appropriately harangued by Herr Helfferichâone of those morally responsible for Rathenauâs murderâare demanding âdictatorship against the parties and against the mobs on the streetsâ andâ¦lowering of taxes. Traders in Berlin are preparing to sack their staff and close their shops on October 1, if taxes remain at
their present level. After all, they are fleecing the consumers as best they can, and they still canât make a living! A strike in the markets is being organized for the same reasons; the proprietors of cafés and restaurants are getting excited, protesting, talking of closing down⦠The Chambers of Commerce have declared that certain taxation measures cannot be applied. Small traders and manufacturers have ceased activity, killing two birds with one stone, hitting the proletariat and the tax collectors.
This spontaneous resistance by obstinate capitalists who wonât yield a halfpenny, at a time when the very existence of bourgeois society is at stake, shows just how deep and insoluble are the internal contradictions which mark the doom of the capitalist system. As it is, they seem to be condemning the efforts of Stresemann and Hilferding to failure: these belated saviours of the bourgeoisie may make it scream, but will not succeed in making it pay even the maintenance expenses of the state; it will pay only when the working class has it by the throat. And they wonât succeed in making the proletarians, who want to see things resolved, work harder than they can or will.
Phynances and stupidity
The day before yesterday, September 5, at Berlin, the dollar was quoted at 19,500,000 marks. The intervention by the Reichsbank on the stock exchange had no effect except to transfer a certain number of millions of gold marks into the pockets of the speculators. And yesterday, the dollar was worth 46,000,000; today itâs worth 60,000,000. What will it be worth tomorrow? A hundred million? Now it is quite simply to be feared that in a few days the printed paper of the German state will no longer be accepted by foreign financiers. The most recent effort by the Reichsbank to stabilize the mark was of such an imbecile nature that the whole bourgeois press has made it public. The Berliner Tageblatt has told how
the Reichsbank intervention lowered the price of the dollar and the pound sterling, for a few moments. The stock exchange pirates had merely to buy the foreign currency sold by the government agents cheapâso as to sell it again half an hour later at a higher priceâ¦
Herr Helfferich proposes
Alarmed by the fresh collapse of the mark, the Stresemann-Helfferich government is proposing to create a new German
The bourgeoisie wonât let a halfpenny go
âThe propertied classes must agree to make sacrifices.â That is how the Stresemann-Hilferding government puts it, and we know that it is demanding the payment of various new taxes in foreign currency. An unavoidable necessity. According to the official budget report of August 20, state expenditure has increased 3,500,000 timesâtaking the pre-war level as oneâand income 77,250 times. With a deficit of that size, the functioning of the machine will soon come to a halt. And then, if they want to make starving people work harder, they really must tell them that the rich are chipping in somethingâ¦
Only thereâs a problem: the rich are idiots, the rich are stubborn, the rich donât want to pay. The Nation, the Republic, the Vaterland 104 can rot, Iâm keeping my money! The association of Saxon industrialists has written to citizen Hilferding to state that the new taxes are too high; they canât pay. The landowning deputies in the Reichstag, appropriately harangued by Herr Helfferichâone of those morally responsible for Rathenauâs murderâare demanding âdictatorship against the parties and against the mobs on the streetsâ andâ¦lowering of taxes. Traders in Berlin are preparing to sack their staff and close their shops on October 1, if taxes remain at
their present level. After all, they are fleecing the consumers as best they can, and they still canât make a living! A strike in the markets is being organized for the same reasons; the proprietors of cafés and restaurants are getting excited, protesting, talking of closing down⦠The Chambers of Commerce have declared that certain taxation measures cannot be applied. Small traders and manufacturers have ceased activity, killing two birds with one stone, hitting the proletariat and the tax collectors.
This spontaneous resistance by obstinate capitalists who wonât yield a halfpenny, at a time when the very existence of bourgeois society is at stake, shows just how deep and insoluble are the internal contradictions which mark the doom of the capitalist system. As it is, they seem to be condemning the efforts of Stresemann and Hilferding to failure: these belated saviours of the bourgeoisie may make it scream, but will not succeed in making it pay even the maintenance expenses of the state; it will pay only when the working class has it by the throat. And they wonât succeed in making the proletarians, who want to see things resolved, work harder than they can or will.
Phynances and stupidity
The day before yesterday, September 5, at Berlin, the dollar was quoted at 19,500,000 marks. The intervention by the Reichsbank on the stock exchange had no effect except to transfer a certain number of millions of gold marks into the pockets of the speculators. And yesterday, the dollar was worth 46,000,000; today itâs worth 60,000,000. What will it be worth tomorrow? A hundred million? Now it is quite simply to be feared that in a few days the printed paper of the German state will no longer be accepted by foreign financiers. The most recent effort by the Reichsbank to stabilize the mark was of such an imbecile nature that the whole bourgeois press has made it public. The Berliner Tageblatt has told how
the Reichsbank intervention lowered the price of the dollar and the pound sterling, for a few moments. The stock exchange pirates had merely to buy the foreign currency sold by the government agents cheapâso as to sell it again half an hour later at a higher priceâ¦
Herr Helfferich proposes
Alarmed by the fresh collapse of the mark, the Stresemann-Helfferich government is proposing to create a new German
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